THE WIDOWER'S TALE BY JULIA GLASS

Seventy year old Percy Darling is settling happily into retirement.  He is reading novels, watching old movies and swimming naked in his pond.  His routines are disrupted when he is persuaded to let a locally beloved pre-school take over his barn.  As Percy sees his rural refuge overrun by children, parents and teachers, he must re-examine the solitary life that he has made for himself in the three decades since the sudden untimely death of his wife.  

This is a captivating tale about a man who can no longer remain aloof from his community, his two grown daughters or to his great shock, the precarious joy of falling in love.

I don't know which character I enjoyed the most, Percy, Trudy, Clover, Robert, Turo or Ira and Anthony.

It was a wonderful book!!!! 

ASTRAY BY EMMA DONOGHUE

The historical short stories in Emma Donoghue's new collection wander across centuries and continents, but they actually don't stray far from this Irish-born writer's preoccupation with captivity, sexual predation, prostitution, and the grip of parenting.  

All fourteen stories concern some sort of wanderer;  a wife fleeing the Irish famine to join her suffering husband in Toronto; a black slave and his white "Missus" bolting from the nasty, "Marse" in Civil War Texas; prospectors who strike an unexpected vein of mutual comfort in the snowbound Yukon goldfields; Chicago counterfeiters who hatch a harebrained plot to ransom Lincoln's exhumed body for a jailed colleagues release; and a lesbian couple losing each other to dementia after nearly six decades of living and making sculpture in Toronto.

Donoghue's endnotes supply information that takes us beyond the scope of her stories. They enhance the stories and satisfy our curiosity about what really happened.

Excellent read!!!!!

JERUSALEM MAIDEN by TALIA CARNER

This is a very beautifully written book about the little know sect of Jews who lived in Jerusalem,  Israel during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire pre-WWI.    They were the Haredi Jews. They are almost cult like in their Orthodoxy.  They consider themselves the Jewish people's emissaries to the holy city and devote their entire life to worshipping Gd.  

This is the story of Esther Kaminsky.  The story begins in 1911.  Esther is eleven and has been raised to believe that she is one of the elite Jews who will save all the Jews by following all the very strict rules and regulations imposed upon them by their holy books and rabbis. Growing up in poverty, she is taught that as a Jewish girl living in the Holy City, it is her role and responsibility to marry an Orthodox man and hasten the coming of the Messiah, by having as many children as possible.  Esther struggles against these expectations and also against the commandment no to make idols.   When Esther discovers her amazing artistic talents, she struggles with believing that they are Gd's gift to her or believing what her religion tells her is a mortal sin. 

The book is very engaging.

AN AVAILABLE MAN BY HILMA WOLITZER

This is a very tender and funny novel.  The author mines the unpredictable fallout of suddenly becoming single later in life, and the chaos and joys of falling in love the second time around.  

The main character is Edward Schuyler, a modest and bookish, sixty-two year old science teacher who is widowed and finds himself ambushed by female attention.  

He begins dating, torn between his loyalty to Bee's memory and his growing longing for connection. 

Just when he thinks that he has the game figured out, a chance meeting proves again that love arrives when you least expect it. 

The novel celebrates the endurance of love and its thrilling capacity to bloom anew.

FORGOTTEN COUNTRY BY CATHERINE CHUNG

This is a very interesting story about inner relationships in a Korean family.  The story line doesn't go very far, but the characterizations are very interesting.  I enjoyed the intense love-hate relationship between the sisters.  It was fascinating to see why this family moved to America and how they were rejected.  The husband-wife relationship and family relationships, once they moved back to Korea, because the dad had cancer were also fascinating.

THE TIME KEEPER BY MITCH ALBOM

This is a truly excellent fable.  It is the story of a timekeeper.  The real value is that it tells the value of time and how to live in the moment.

THE SECRET KEEPER BY KATE MORTON

This is an excellent novel!!!!   It's a real page turner!!!!!

It starts in 1961 when Laurel, hiding in her tree house is the witness to a strange man coming up the walkway of their farm.    He has "found" her Mother who is carrying Laurel's baby brother, Jerry.  Laurel's mother kills the man and Laurel is the witness to something that the family never discusses.

Years later as the mom is dying Laurel unravels this amazing World War II story.  It's the story of Jimmy, Vivian, Dolly and Henry and the setting is World War II during the German bombing of London.

An amazing story!!!!!!!

OF MICE AND MEN BY JOHN STEINBECK

This is an intimate portrait of two men, George and Lennie, facing a world marked by petty tyranny. misunderstanding, jealousy and callousness.  

The theme is universal.  It is about a friendship and shared dream that makes an individuals existence meaningful.

WENDY AND THE LOST BOYS BY JULIE SALAMON

The book tells the story of the life of Wendy Wasserstein.

I found this book to be a very interesting portrait of a playwright who had to deal with a very difficult family in a very difficult time period.

WILD BY CHERYL STAYED

This is a blazingly honest memoir:  the story of an eleven hundred mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe and built her back up again.

It captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened and ultimately healed her.

It's from LOST TO FOUND ON THE PACIFIC COAST TRAIL.


Stunning, an incredible journey inward and outward!!!!

SNOW IN AUGUST by PETE HAMIL

Michael Devlin is a young Irish boy who has long found himself the victim of bullies at school.  However when he witnesses a local gang leader beat a Jewish shopkeeper nearly to death, his life becomes even harder than usual. Though he realizes that he must reveal what he saw to the authorities, Michael finds that it's hard to do the right thing knowing that he will receive harder beatings than usual.  However, when Michael befriends a local Jewish Rabbi, the two figure out a way to bring the gang leader to justice while keeping Michael safe, all aided by the legendary Golem, a mythical protector made from clay.

An excellent story................

UNBROKEN BY LAURA HILLENBRAND

In May of 1943, during World War II an American plane was shot down over the Pacific Ocean. This begins Louis Zamperini's journey to survive against all odds as a P.O.W. in a Japanese prison camp.

The former Olympic contender showed the resilence of the human mind, body and spirit.

This book was a page turner!!!!   Wow!!!! 

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY BY OSCAR WILDE

Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty.  Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society.  Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.

It was a truly amazing book!!!!!

THE GREAT GATSBY BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

I am listening to the unabridged version of the book and it is wonderful!!!!

Bathtub gin, flappers, house parties, Jay Gatsby and Daisy enliven Fitzgerald's classic tale. When I read it in high school, it didn't mean as much as it does now.  

It is a startling literate portrait of Gatsby's search for meaning in his opulent world. 

THREE WEEKS IN DECEMBER BY AUDREY SCHULMAN

  

It tells the story of Jeremy, a young engineer, who leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across British East Africa in 1899.  He becomes the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men on nightly attacks on his camp.  Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria and alienated by a secret that he can tell no one, he forms a friendship with a man who scouts for him.

In 2000, Max an American ethnobotonist, travels to Rwanda in search of an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. Stationed in the mountains, she shadows a family of gorillas.  Max has a gift for communicating with apes.  Soon the freedom of both is threatened as a violent rebel group from the nearby Congo draws close.

ONCE WE WERE BROTHERS BY RONALD H. BALSON

The author has written a riveting and amazing novel about a Holocaust survivor named Ben Solomon who finds a Nazi named Otto who is "hiding" under the Jewish name, Elliot Rosensweig.  

It is the story of how this Nazi criminal was brought to justice 60 years later.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST By Stieg Larsson

I listened to this as an audio book.  It made all of the characters come alive and the story of how Lisbeth was finally freed spiritually and emotionally was wonderful.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC BY Julie Otsuka

Excellent novel!!!   It tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" nearly a century ago.

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS By Chris Bohjalian

This is truly an excellent historical fiction novel!!!!!!  The author explores the ways in which our ancestral past informs our contemporary lives in ways that we understand and ways that remain out of reach.

THE DESCENDANTS BY KAUI HART HEMMINGS

This was a very good story with very good descriptions of scenery and characterizations.


I listened to it as an audio book for the FIRST time and it was wonderful!!!  


It was an interesting characterization of a family in crisis.  There was Matthew King who was torn between selling property with his cousins.  This was property that went back generations to a founding Hawaiian Princess and the white man she married.  The children included 10 year old Scottie, who was a smart ass and 17 year old Alex, a former model and recovering drug addict.   Matt's thrill seeking and high maintenance wife, Joanie, had an affair with a man named Brian Spears and now is lying in a coma after a boating accident.  She will soon be taken off life support.


The interaction of the characters was fascinating.

THE DOVE KEEPERS BY ALICE HOFFMAN

This is a tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful and sensuous women, each of who has come to Masada by a different path. 


The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege.  All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets, about who they are, where they come from, who fathered them and whom they love.


It is a dramatic and engaging book.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY BY E L JAMES

When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant and intimidating.  The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize that she wants this man, and despite his reserve, finds that she is desperate to get close to him.  Unable to resist Ana's quiet beauty, wit and independent spirit, Grey admits that he wants her too- but, on his own terms.


Shocked, yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates.  For all the trappings of success, Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control.  When the couple embarks on a daring passionate physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey's secrets and explores her own dark desires.


All I can say is,  WOW!!!!!!!

STATE OF WONDER by ANN PATCHETT

 As Dr. Marina Singh embarks upon an uncertain odyssey into the insect-infested Amazon, she will be forced to surrender herself to the lush, but forbidding world that awaits within the jungle.  Charged with finding her former mentor, Dr. Annick Swenson, a researcher who has disappeared while working on a valuable new drug, she will have to confront her own memories of tragedy and sacrifice as she journeys into the unforgiving heart of darkness.


In a narrative replete with poison arrows, devouring snakes, and a neighboring tribe of cannibals, State of Wonder is a world unto itself, where unlikely beauty stands beside unimaginable loss.   It s a tale that lead me into the very heart of darkness and then showed me what was on the other side.

BOSSYPANTS BY TINA FEY

From her youthful days as a vicious nerd, to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live, from her passionately half-hearted pursuit of physical beauty, to her life as a mother eating things off the floor, from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon, from the beginning of this paragraph to the final sentence.


Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we all suspected:  you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

YOGA from the INSIDE OUT by CHRISTINA SELL

How do you make peace with your body through yoga?  What does, "making peace with the body" really mean?  How do you integrate your physical practice with inner body awareness and a deep connection to the heart?


This book elevates the philosophy of hatha yoga to a spiritual art of self-love and acceptance that can transform your self-image.  Yoga is so much more than postures and breathing.  It is a deeply personal journey back home to ourselves and it takes us from self-doubt and judgement to self-acceptance and joy.


It helps us to discover our true nature and to make that our intention.

A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME BY WILEY CASH

Told by three resonant and evocative characters, Jess, Adelaide Lyle, the town midwife and moral conscience and Clem Barefield, a sheriff with his own painful past, the book is a haunting tale of courage in the face of cruelty and the power to love to overcome the darkness that lives in us all. 


Adventurous, Jess is enormously protective of his older brother, Christopher, a mute, whom everyone calls Stump.  Though their mother has told them not to snoop, Stump can't help sneaking a peek at something he's not supposed to.  This is an act that will have catastrophic consequences shattering both his world and Jess's.  It's a wrenching event that thrusts Jess into a world that he is not prepared for.  


Excellent story!!!!

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS by JAMES FENIMORE COOPER

Set against the wild landscapes of North America, at the novels center is the celebrated "Massacre" of British troops and their families by Indian allies of the French in 1757. Around this historical event, Cooper builds a romantic fiction of captivity, sexuality and heroism in which the destiny of the Mohican Chingachgook and his son Uncas is inseparable from the lives of Alice and Cora Munro and of Hawk-eye the frontier scout.

WATERSHIP DOWN BY RICHARD ADAMS

Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and certain destruction of their home.  Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

THE STORY OF BEAUTIFUL GIRL BY RACHEL SIMON

It is 1968.  Lynnie, a young white girl with a developmental disability and Homan, an African-American deaf man are locked away in the SCHOOL FOR THE INCURABLE AND FEEBLEMINDED and have been left to languish in the institution, forgotten.  Deeply in love, they escape and find refuge in the farmhouse of Martha, a retired schoolteacher and widow.  But, the couple in not alone,  Lynnie has just given birth to a baby girl.  When the authorities catch up to them the same night, Homan escapes into the darkness and Lynnie is caught.  Before she is forced back into the institution, she whispers two words to Martha:  "HIDE HER."


And so begins, the forty-year, epic journey of Lynnie, Homan, Martha and baby Julia.....lives divided by seemingly insurmountable obstacles, yet drawn together by a secret place and extraordinary love.

YOGA from the INSIDE OUT by Christina Sell

This book is perhaps the most important and inspiring book on the philosophy of hatha yoga, which it elevates to a spiritual art of self-love and acceptance that can transform your self-image. The philosophy is that practicing yoga is so much more than just postures and breathing.  It is a deeply personal journey back home to ourselves, and it takes us from self-doubt and judgement to self-acceptance and joy.  

THE KITCHEN HOUSE BY KATHLEEN GRISSOM

Orphaned during her passage from Ireland, young, white, Lavinia, arrives on the steps of the kitchen house and is placed, as an indentured servant, under the care of Belle, the master's illegitimate slave daughter.  Lavinia learns to cook, clean, and serve food while guided by the quiet strength and love of her new family.

In time, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, caring for the master's opium-addicted wife and befriending his dangerous, yet protective son.  She attempts to straddle the world of the kitchen and the big house, but her skin color will forever set her apart from Belle and the other slaves.

Through the unique eyes of Lavinia and Belle, Kathleen Grissom's novel unfolds in a heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful story of class, race, dignity, deep buried secrets and familial bonds.

Breathe Into Being: Awakening to Who You Really Are by Dennis Lewis

This is a very wise and readable book about one of the most fundamental insights of the great spiritual traditions: that the breathe is a mediator between mind and body and a bridge to the transcendent.  The book helps you to cultivate awareness and live in the now.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1921. It was during these years that the as of yet unpublished young writer gathered the material for his first novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES.

Among these small reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly ragtime circle of artists and writers some fated to also achieve fame and glory and others to fall into obscurity.

A MOVEABLE FEAST is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the twenties and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.

The Paris Wife by Paula McClain

This is a remarkable novel about Ernest Hemingway's first marriage. It is a heartbreaking portrayal of love and torn loyalty. The novel is all the more poignant because in the end, Hemingway wrote that he would rather have died than fallen in love with anyone but Hadley.

My Year With Eleanor by Noelle Hancock

Painfully timid as a child, Eleanor Roosevelt dedicated herself to facing her fears, a commitment that shaped the rest of her life. With Eleanor as her guide, Noelle spends the months leading up to her thirtieth birthday pursuing a Year of Fear." From shark diving to fighter pilot lessons, from tap dancing and stand-up comedy to confronting old boyfriends, her hilarious and harrowing adventures teach her about who she is, and what she can become, lessons that she makes vital for all of us.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

This is a fantasy of the future that sheds a blazing critical light on the present. It is a prophetic voice that remains surprisingly contemporary, both in its particular forecasts and in its general tone of semiserious alarm.

The Tenth Door By Michele Hebert

Michele Hebert recounts the stunning story of her spiritual training with legendary yoga master Walt Baptiste. Journeying with her, you are transported from San Francisco through a year-long stint of near solitude in the jungles of El Salvador, as the country moves from seeming tranquility to revolution. In this exotic venue, she comes face to face with challenges that test her devotion, her carefully cultivated yoga discipline, and even her earthly existence.

This unexpectedly humorous and intimate story transcends the world of physical yoga and explores its deep, ancient mysteries. The lessons that she learns from Walt Baptiste's brilliant but often unorthodox methods are at the heart of her memoir, which illuminates timeless teachings and authentic practices in a tale that is as accessible as it is captivating.

Free to Love, Free to Heal by David Simon

The author guides you on a five step process that has helped me to release my emotional pain, find freedom from the past, and reclaim my health and happiness. We must identify, mobilize, and release the life-damaging beliefs, that contribute o anxiety, addictive behaviors, chronic pain, depression, obesity, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel syndrome and many more emotional and physical health problems.

The reader must be prepared to become an active partner in her own healing journey.

This book will help you to heal your emotions and your body.

A must read!!!!!

How To Get What You Want and Want What You Get by Joel Gray

This book presents a brilliantly innovative program for achieving personal success. The wisdom and techniques in these pages enabled me to feel greater joy, love, confidence and peace. I learned:

*Your experience of the world reflects your inner state.

*When you aren't getting what you need, you are always looking in the wrong direction.

*Find your soul's desire and start getting everything that you want.

*Material success can only make you happy if you are already happy.

*The power to get what you want comes from confidence, positive feeling and desire.

*You have the power to change. No one can do it for you.

YOU HAVE TO WORK AT CREATING THE LIFE THAT YOU WANT!!!!!

Are You There, Vodka? It's Me Chelsea! By Chelsea Handler

The book consists of true stories written by comedian Chelsea Handler.

I really did not like the book. It made the author seem rather useless.